Americas

2011

New
York, December 28, 2011--The director of the Quito-based daily Hoy has been convicted on charges of criminal libel for
articles depicting the political influence of an Ecuadoran banking official who
is a relative of President Rafael Correa, news reports said.

Tags:

You don't notice it at first. Not with the people seemingly moving as normal
on the sidewalks and the happy recorded music blaring across the plaza in front
of city hall to announce the annual cowboy parade. No, at first Nuevo Laredo
looks like a regular border town, until the military armored car goes by a
block away and rotates the heavy machine gun toward the plaza. Are the soldiers
just curious? Or do they see something they want to shoot? Who will be hit if
they do open fire? Then other images come into focus, like the blocks of closed
shops, with for sale signs only on the most recently closed because the owners
of the older, more dilapidated shops, have given up even that hope.

In "Banding Together: The Chauncey Bailey Project Fights Impunity," CPJ’s Maria Salazar-Ferro describes how a group of Bay Area journalists worked together to ensure that the murder of their colleague did not go unpunished. Using investigative journalism as an advocacy tool, the Bailey Project held authorities accountable and brought about the conviction of the mastermind. (3:05)

Please read the CPJ special report on journalists killed and visit our database of reporters, editors, photojournalists, and others who have given their lives for their work.

December 20, 2011 12:00 AM ET

Tags:

CPJ today released its annual tally of the journalists
killed around the world. This is always a somber occasion for us as we chronicle
the grim toll, remember friends who have been lost, and recommit ourselves
to justice. It's also a time when we are asked questions about our
research and why our numbers are different - invariably lower - than other
organizations.

Tags:

Dear President Lobo: The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to express its deep concern about the unrelenting violence against the Honduran press. Our letter to you is prompted by events earlier this month that once again highlight the extraordinary risks that Honduran journalists must take simply to do their jobs.

A founder of Mexican news weekly Ríodoce, Javier
Valdez Cárdenas, traveled to New York in November to receive CPJ's
International Press Freedom Award at our annual benefit dinner. No sooner had
he returned to Mexico than Ríodoce's
website was thrown offline by a denial of service (DOS) attack, in which
multiple computers are used to flood a webserver with fake requests, slowing
down the site so that it cannot serve legitimate requests.

New York, December 7, 2011--Honduran journalist Luz Marina
Paz Villalobos was shot and killed in the capital Tegucigalpa on Tuesday,
according to local news
reports. Delmer Osmar Canales Gutiérrez, a cousin who worked as her driver,
was also killed in the attack. Investigators are looking into several possible
motives, including Paz's journalism.

Tags:

New York, December 6, 2011--The
offices of Peruvian regional daily El Sol
de los Andes were attacked and vandalized on November 30 after the
newspaper reported on alleged links between local police and criminal gangs,
according to local press reports.

Tags:

New York, December 5, 2011--The offices of Honduran
daily La Tribuna, based in the capital, Tegucigalpa, were attacked by
unidentified gunmen early this morning after the newspaper published reports
that linked local police to recent murders, news reports said.